A few months ago I first learned of what I thought was a once in a life time catastrophic event that scammed my relatives of everything they had in the world. Little did I know that in the following months I would learn I was just getting started.
TL,DR; I learned grams got scammed of some cash in the many hundreds of thousands, then borrowed money from an unquestioning mom, and now was completly broke.
I thought that was it. Surely this person who my whole life was the most inteligent woman I've ever met hit rock bottom and stayed there.
Turns out, I knew fuckall.
Not only she borrowed money from my mom, it was a lot more than I thought. 150k, half of which wasnt hers to lend.
Moreover, she also took out multiple loans from multiple banks, always with enouh low threshold high interest enough not to raise too many questions
She took them out to pay the many many recovery scammers she was bombarded with. Those bastards were as frequent as they were clever, sometimes disguising themselves as experts, others as European Central Bank authorities asking for "Regularization Fees".
I thought things had hit rock bottom. She showed me some documents some email from people who wanted money from her. They were so bad.
They had QR codes that led nowhere, the web adressess were like "www.gov.uk" and language switch halfway through the text several times, to say nothing of more obvious stuff like the emaildomain tracking back from the KuoKuo islands.
Finally this time, I thought, I stepped in just in time to turn some lights on and help. This time I thought, she learned her lesson and dodged the bullet. She was shocked had another episode but I finally set her up in a meeting with an expert lawyer.
What did I learn?
By the time that woman asked me for help, she had already paid those scammers another 2k. She was lying to me, and lied to me when i asked her if she had already sent them money.
She spent money we gave her just to subsist and pay for groceries and meds. After my mom stepped in to stop gap most of her predatory loans.
All an all she's burnt through around just shy of 700k of our family's wealth.
You guys tried to warn me, but I couldnt listen hard enough. This just wasnt the woman I knew.
I was wrong, and that woman is gone. We may discuss escalating options but the buck stops here now for good.
I didnt pull enough alarms, I didnt break enough glass. Everyone swore to me the lessons were learned but I was being lied to the whole time. Only you guys tried to warn me hard enough. Thanks everyone